A Day in the Life of Dink Smallwood
A new DMOD is released without me knowing it? Apparently it can happen if I'm on vacation. So when I got back the first time I saw it was when a review was written for it. A very praising review, I might add. So I started the DMOD hoping to get an enjoyable quest. But really, I can't see why it could possibly have deserved the score it got.
The DMOD starts rather simple, you need to do a couple of chores for your girlfriend. But after a while there are no more chores for you and a warp mysteriously appears, you press a button and dead people start appearing everywhere. Sounds like the story for a comedy DMOD. And this DMOD also tries to be funny, but the humor didn't quite work out for me. Probably because a lot of it was quite vulgar, or at least not very tasteful.
This entire story is also a bit unclear. You'll probably find out what you need to do after a while, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I can't say it any better than Dink himself: "To be honest I don't even know what my quest is any more" And when I finished the DMOD I wasn't quite sure if I had actually finished it. Probably there was something else to do, but the story felt finished to me. At least I got through all of the dungeons.
And that's something I probably shouldn't have done. As I felt that these dungeons really ruined the DMOD. The thing I hated most about these dungeons was the balance. There were monsters that you could kill with a single blow and monsters that could kill you with a single blow. This means that collecting power-ups wasn't just a nice bonus, it was a necessity. And even then the monsters were terribly strong at times. Their defense and hitpoints were reasonable, but their strength was totally off balance. Believe me, there are other ways to make hard enemies than by giving them lots of strength.
All of this was aggravated by the fact that none of the enemies leave hearts behind. So what was I supposed to do then? Run back to the village to drink from the healing well every time I got hit? Yes, you could get healing magic too, but that was hardly effective and prohibitively expensive early on. I don't want to spend two minutes healing myself with magic after every fight. And after every fight means after every screen, as screenlock is used rather abundantly.
The music in this DMOD is quite reasonable. There aren't many MIDIs, but they're quite nice and used reasonably well. The same goes for the mapping: It isn't spectacular, but it's pretty decent. I couldn't find any hardness errors and the screens were decorated nicely.
Now it is very hard for me to figure out the score I give to this DMOD because it's hard for me to see the DMOD behind the frustrating balance. But in reality it was probably just reasonable. Unless you really like cheap sexual references I suppose.
5.0
The DMOD starts rather simple, you need to do a couple of chores for your girlfriend. But after a while there are no more chores for you and a warp mysteriously appears, you press a button and dead people start appearing everywhere. Sounds like the story for a comedy DMOD. And this DMOD also tries to be funny, but the humor didn't quite work out for me. Probably because a lot of it was quite vulgar, or at least not very tasteful.
This entire story is also a bit unclear. You'll probably find out what you need to do after a while, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I can't say it any better than Dink himself: "To be honest I don't even know what my quest is any more" And when I finished the DMOD I wasn't quite sure if I had actually finished it. Probably there was something else to do, but the story felt finished to me. At least I got through all of the dungeons.
And that's something I probably shouldn't have done. As I felt that these dungeons really ruined the DMOD. The thing I hated most about these dungeons was the balance. There were monsters that you could kill with a single blow and monsters that could kill you with a single blow. This means that collecting power-ups wasn't just a nice bonus, it was a necessity. And even then the monsters were terribly strong at times. Their defense and hitpoints were reasonable, but their strength was totally off balance. Believe me, there are other ways to make hard enemies than by giving them lots of strength.
All of this was aggravated by the fact that none of the enemies leave hearts behind. So what was I supposed to do then? Run back to the village to drink from the healing well every time I got hit? Yes, you could get healing magic too, but that was hardly effective and prohibitively expensive early on. I don't want to spend two minutes healing myself with magic after every fight. And after every fight means after every screen, as screenlock is used rather abundantly.
The music in this DMOD is quite reasonable. There aren't many MIDIs, but they're quite nice and used reasonably well. The same goes for the mapping: It isn't spectacular, but it's pretty decent. I couldn't find any hardness errors and the screens were decorated nicely.
Now it is very hard for me to figure out the score I give to this DMOD because it's hard for me to see the DMOD behind the frustrating balance. But in reality it was probably just reasonable. Unless you really like cheap sexual references I suppose.
5.0
So, thia D-Mod's story is not it's strong point. It also contains various grammar problems. It's humor is also a bit hit-and-miss. But there are certain good aspects here too. The mapping, while nothing extrordinary is good. The best part of this D-Mod are the included magic spells there are three types of spells you can get depending on your choices and money. There's a healing spell, which is not novel, but the highlight goes to the attack spells. There's a spell that shoots rocks and another spell that shoots arrows into all directions. These might be interesting to some D-Mod authors. Also the music selection is good. I would recommend this D-Mod for people looking for a short adventure and don't mind the crude humor.
I wasn't that impressed with this dmod. Sure, it has some funny references to the original, but after a while, things just get tedious, and it seemed pointless to continue. I didn't reach any satisfactory ending (if there is one).
The good:
A funny parody of what it's like to be a hero. Contains many humorous references to the original Dink adventure.
The bad:
The humor is funny only for the first few times. It just gets old after a while. Toilet humor can only be used so often before it degrades into pointless vulgarity. There is also a lack of impetus to push the plot forward (well, if it can be considered a plot---maybe I just didn't get far enough: what I saw of it didn't convince me to go any farther).
There are also other minor issues that detract from the game.
Overall, this is an OK dmod to kill some time, but that's all.
The good:
A funny parody of what it's like to be a hero. Contains many humorous references to the original Dink adventure.
The bad:
The humor is funny only for the first few times. It just gets old after a while. Toilet humor can only be used so often before it degrades into pointless vulgarity. There is also a lack of impetus to push the plot forward (well, if it can be considered a plot---maybe I just didn't get far enough: what I saw of it didn't convince me to go any farther).
There are also other minor issues that detract from the game.
Overall, this is an OK dmod to kill some time, but that's all.
I really like this d-mod. Most of the parts are funny, some of them have a lot of action and so on....
Story: It is ok: In the start Dink has too do the chores around the village, but later he has to find out what made the bloodbath in the village.
žGraphics and map: No new ones...too bad, but still old ones are used excellent. Map is also good.
Gameplay: All i can say is cool
Music: Ok..i guess...
Monsters aren't insane (very hard too kill), like some d-mods i played XD
Overall: Good, funny d-mod 9.6!!
You really deserved it
Keep up the good work!
Story: It is ok: In the start Dink has too do the chores around the village, but later he has to find out what made the bloodbath in the village.
žGraphics and map: No new ones...too bad, but still old ones are used excellent. Map is also good.
Gameplay: All i can say is cool
Music: Ok..i guess...
Monsters aren't insane (very hard too kill), like some d-mods i played XD
Overall: Good, funny d-mod 9.6!!
You really deserved it
Keep up the good work!